Dragon Quest XI And The Mystery Of the NX

NE: Dragon Quest XI: In Search of Departed Time was recently revealed for the 3DS and PS4. Along with this announcement, however, we got a curious mention from Square Enix: the game may come to the Nintendo NX. This is quite the surprising announcement at this point, as no other games have been announced or hinted at for Nintendo’s next console – not even by Nintendo themselves. So it’s definitely worth taking a look at some of what this may mean.

Like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest has graced both Nintendo and PlayStation platforms successfully so for its 30th anniversary, its just gratefulness that Enix "spread the love" on both PS4 and 3DS and "consider" the NX or even more the PS Vita at least in Japan.

And that is a win win situation for many gamers familiar or new to Dragon Quest (Dragon Warrior in the USA before).

Oh, and I hope we can change or customize the protagonist's hair color to lavender so he will definitely look like Trunks.

Oh okay then. You know i could swear i read ready at dawn saying that the tech behind the order 1886 could be done on other platforms, including in their words "unannounced hardware". Maybe there's a chance they already knew about the NX.

NX is rumored to be launching between Summer 2016 - Holiday 2017. Honestly the sooner the better for Nintendo. If they can make it holiday 2016 then that means that PS4 / XBO won't have nearly the grip on the market as they will in 2017, and it also means NX doesn't have to run into PS5 / XB4 so soon in it's life-cycle (2020 is what I'm hoping for PS5 / XB, but I have a feeling someone is going to jump for 2019, or MS might pull a bold move and jump in 2018, making each console launch 2 years apart from each other, which would cause all kinds of confusion).

But the sooner the launch for NX the better.

Topic 2. 3rd parties

Nintendo never had a problem with getting 3rd party support from Japan, so it's not a huge surprise to see Dragon Quest come to the NX. The question is will Western 3rd party devs even attempt to make games for NX, and will Nintendo court them. Honestly it's not a make or break scenario for Nintendo who has gone 4 gens now without much 3rd party support, but no one can argue that having more games as a bad thing, especially when the games 3rd parties make fill a void that Nintendo will never try to attempt. Nintendo should work on smart partnerships with 3rd parties and get games that tie into their audience, but not ruin their safe haven for gaming image. Batman Arkham Knight, Borderlands Collection (as a matter of fact most of the collections should come to NX, it's the console that needs it most), The Witcher 3, Project Cars, DMC4 / DmC, and a few more that released this gen.

They don't need everything, and they won't get everything since devs have felt the sting of awful Nintendo sells for far too long, but with just enough to fill the voids and a push from Nintendo themselves they can make the best console they've had since SNES and get more devs to slowly make Nintendo games again.

Power. I know fanboys have been screaming MORE power than the PS4, and all that's going to lead to is a moment of bragging rights on n4g, meanwhile Nintendo sales are awful once again as they try to sell a $400 to a niche core of Nintendo gamers.

AMD pretty much confirmed they're working on the core for NX, and there's a fairly large range to choose from. But for a console build, there are a few detailed options to choose from. A10 Kaveri APU < R7 250x/350x < R7 260/360x < R7 370, or their mobile branch of GPUs all of which range from 800 GFLOPS - 2TFLOPS. The reason these cards are most likely is because of TDP is under 120w for the GPU alone which is important in a small box like a console. The next step up the R9 380 is 190w alone.

Regardless of what fanboys think for multiplat games the PS4 and XBO are 9/10 going to be the same, even when there is a difference such as resolution being 1080p vs 900p, not a single XBO owner cares nor does the loss of rez make the game unbearable, once again this is simply bragging rights. So Nintendo would be wise to launch a console that cost less than both PS4 / XBO, and has performance at least on par with them (specifically the XBO).

As much as fanboys wish otherwise, it's just illogical to launch a $400 console that's 0.2 TFLOP (aka 200 GFLOPS) better than the PS4, when they can launch a console for $250 that's equal to the XBO. The gap in performance doesn't make sense to the $100 price hike over the PS4 (by holiday 2016), but the $250 price point is $50 less, and allows more gamers to jump into the Nintendo console at a consumer friendly price.

For max power I assume the NX will be using the R9 M375 (mobile GPU), which is an upgraded R7 250x, which would put bring it's performance level right on par with the XBO while running at nearly 1/2 the TDP. This sounds exactly like Nintendo, focusing on low TDP to build a small console. The 250x was a $100 GPU when it launched in 2014, so 2 years later this GPU retails for $80 and can be had for much less with a rebate so for Nintendo this GPU probably cost $60 for their console at most.

It's rumored they're using an APU, and more than likely they'll use a similar CPU that Sony and MS did. That leave the final question of what kind of RAM to expect. My guess is 2GB DRR3 + 4GB GDDR5. This console has to aim for a $250 price, their OS don't use a lot of memory so 2GB is fine, and 4GB of GRAM is more than enough for 1080p and games.

8-Core CPU R9 M375 (1.3 TFLOPS) 2GB DDR3 + 4GB GDDR5 70w TDP $249

It's more then enough to get DQ, and pretty much every other 3rd party game to come out.

Could you and everyone else tell me what exactly will Nintendo gain by launching a $400 2 TFLOP console.

The extra 700 GFLOPS is not worth the extra $150 price hike, nor is it enough of a performance gain to really do anything beyond the PS4, you'd get maybe 5 fps average advantage per game. What's the benefit of that? And as much as fanboys like to throw it around running games at a lower resolution doesn't make a game any worse than any other version, especially if it's still HD which this console will be able to handle without question.

At this point dropping the price of the Wii U is pointless, besides it being the right thing to do since the hardware has been vastly overpriced for years now. The Wii U has already been perceived as a failure, 3rd party support won't ever come to it due to it's architecture and low performance, and it's issues such as multimedia, online, social, etc... won't be solved, which are all reasons why they need new hardware.

Finally looking at Nintendo's first party exclusives when have they ever needed max specs to make great playing and great looking games.

This is all with that 350 GFLOPS console, and the console I proposed has 4x the graphical capability. Once again explain what exactly does Nintendo gain by releasing a $400 2 TFLOP console, that they wouldn't get from a $250 1.3 TFLOP console. A $400 price instantly alienates a major buying audience for Nintendo the chile / family gamer who buys a Nintendo console for their younger kids to play on, making it only a buy for core fans which is exactly why the Wii U is such as failure since it launched at $350. A $250 console is inclusive for everyone, offer enough performance to go head to head with XBO and PS4, and will shift more units much faster than a $400.

I'll wait for the opinions on why the $400 console is better business move, because not once has anyone provided an argument for it.

Why would Square Enix care about how much NX sells? The hardware sales aren't their business, that's really Nintendo's concern. SE cares most about how much their software sells, and DQXI would sell better on Vita since it has a larger install base than NX. I know higher hardware sales means more people to buy games, but it shouldn't primarily BG Square Enix's job to sell hardware.

@ ABizzel

The Vita is a generation above 3DS. Plus it doesn't have a dual screen to show retro and modern graphics at the same time. It'd have to be its own port.

Why would they care? Dude, just like you said, more hardware sold equates to higher chances of software selling to a larger percentage of the fan base. There are exceptions that defy those odds like Bay 2 and MK8, but in general, the more popular they help the system become, the more users they'll have on the system to sell their games to.

Nintendo cannot just magically make an install base for Squeenix's games appear. Squeenix needs to put games on there to help form a following for their games to sell to. Even if Nintendo manages a 10m install base on year one for the NX, it won't help Squeenix sell big numbers unless Squeenix puts out effort to advertise their games on the system. Helping Nintendo sell hardware by emphasising the NX versions will directly raise awareness for their software on the system, resulting in better sales for all involved.

The Vita already has a bigger install base. Square Enix already has a better chance if succeeding on that platform than on NX. Plus as a console, NX will never reach the heights of a handheld like Vita in Japan.

Speculation based off of a merger isn't conclusive proof. They could have merged the departments in order to further improve relations between departments and to better coordinate cross-platform games as well as create better ideas from the two different departments being in closer proximity.

I think it's too soon to assume the console will fuse home and handheld.

it better include the new 3ds in that hybrid somewhere, gosh lm regretting buying it, bought it for xenoblade. Later realized the only reason xenoblade needs it is cause the developers were too lazy or inept to use touch. Seriously touch screen is disabled when it could of been a lifesaver with all these cluttered menus >.>

Yeah but it ws also supposed to have been released or Wii U and they even said it looked really good at one point. My point is that the Project Cars developer is a lying sack of crap and their words about releases should never be believed.

Dragon Quest is gonna sell in Japan most regardless the hardware. It takes more than this & all of Nintendo's annually released 1st party games to save it. Thing only thing we know between the 2 is, SE probably has a some type of knowledge of the NX design, to make these statements.

Nobody knows anything about the NX right now except for developers very close to Nintendo. Maybe early next year we will actually get legit leaks of info, but until then everyone else is just trying to drum up traffic to their website.